's labor of a man in Massachusetts is more than equal to two in
Maryland, and four in South Carolina. So, if we take our savage tribes,
with their huts and tents, their rude agriculture, their furs, their few
and simple household manufactures, their hunting and fishing, the
average product of their annual labor, at four cents a day each, would
be $14.60 a year, or more than a fourth of that of South Carolina
(56.91). So that Massachusetts, in material progress, is farther in
advance of South Carolina than that State is of the savage Indians. Thus
we have the successive steps and gradations of man: Massachusetts, with
free labor and free schools, having reached the highest point of
civilization: South Carolina, with slavery and ignorance (except the
few), in a semi-barbarous stage; and the lowest savage condition, called
barbarous, but nearer to South Carolina than that State to
Massachusetts.

Slavery, then, the Census proves, is hostile to the progress of wealth
and population, to science, literature, and education, to schools,
colleges, and universities, to books and libraries, to churches and
religion, to the press, and therefore to free government; hostile to the
poor, keeping them in want and ignorance; hostile to labor, reducing it
to servitude, and decreasing two thirds the value of its products;
hostile to morals, repudiating among slaves the marital and parental
condition, classifying them by law as chattels, darkening the immortal
soul, and making it a crime to teach millions of human beings to read or
write. And shall labor and education, literature and science, religion
and the press, sustain an institution which is their deadly foe?

The discussion will be continued in my next letter.
R. J. WALKER.

PALMER, THE AMERICAN SCULPTOR.

Sculpture as an art is probably anterior to painting. Form being a
simpler quality than color, the means of imitation were found in a
conformity of shape rather than hue. The origin of sculpture is somewhat
obscured in the thickening mists of antiquity, but it was no doubt one
of the earliest symbols of ideas made use of by man. In fact, in its
primitive development, there is considerable evidence to show that it
was the first essay at a recorded language. The Egyptian hieroglyphics,
those mysterious etchings upon the rock, representing animals, men, and
nondescript characters, were unquestionably rude attempts to hand dow